1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a wire harness protector to prevent the wire harness for constantly supplying electric power in such as a sliding door of a vehicle from sagging, and a structure for supplying electric power using the wire harness protector.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is necessary to constantly supply electric power from a body side to the sliding door side of the vehicle for supplying electrical components and accessories such as a speaker, a power window motor, a door lock, a switching unit, and the like with electricity, or transmitting an on/off signal to a motor for opening and closing an automatic door, regardless of whether the sliding door is open or closed. As an example for this purpose, as shown in FIG. 10, a structure for absorbing slack of a wire harness 32 at the time when the sliding door is open or closed by providing a roughly semicircle shaped protector 31 made of synthetic resin inside the sliding door vertically, accommodating the wire harness 32 in a curved shape in the protector 31, and a metal flat spring 39 biasing the wire harness 32 upward is proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-354085.
As shown in FIG. 11, a harness part 32a pulled out of a slit-shaped lower opening 34 of the protector 31 firstly passes through a connecting passage between the sliding door and the vehicle body, secondly is fixed around a step 35 at the vehicle body side by a fixing member 36, and thirdly is connected to a wire harness (not shown) at the vehicle body side. A harness part 32b pulled out of a front opening (not shown) of the protector 31 is wired in the sliding door side to be connected to a wire harness of the sliding door side, the accessory, or the like.
There is no problem with these conventional structures when a height H (a size in the vertical direction) of the protector 31 is relatively high as shown in FIGS. 10 to 11. However, there are problems with these conventional structures. One problem is a case that a down stroke of a window in the sliding door is long. Another problem is when electrical components, accessories and the like are disposed above the protector in the sliding door, and a height H′ of a protector 37 is set low as shown in FIG. 12, as a result of balancing with a stroke length of the sliding door, there is a possibility during opening or closing of the sliding door that the wire harness 32 is not fully accommodated in the protector 37, sagging a little from a lower opening 38 of the protector 37 to interfere with an exterior or other structures of the vehicle at the connecting passage to the vehicle body.
Namely, firstly as shown in FIG. 13, when the sliding door is fully closed, the wire harness 32 is pulled backward of the vehicle without slack using a harness fixing part 36 at the vehicle body side as a fulcrum, while biased upward by the flat spring 39 without problems. Secondly, as shown in FIG. 14, in a state where the sliding door is slightly open, the wire harness 32 begins sagging. Thirdly, as shown in FIG. 15, in a state that the sliding door is substantially half-open, the protector 37 cannot accommodate a whole of the wire harness 32 and the rest 32a is sagging. Fourthly, as shown in FIG. 16, in a state that the sliding door is fully open, the wire harness 32 is pulled forward of the vehicle while the flat spring 39 is largely bent downward without any problems. As described above, there is no problem when the sliding door is fully open or fully closed, however, there is a possibility that the sagging part 32a may be generated during opening or closing of the sliding door as shown in FIGS. 14, 15. This may also happen in a case that a whole length in back and forth direction of the wire harness 32 is short.
However, at the case while the sliding door is in the middle of closing, the possibility that the wire harness 32 sags is little, because the flat spring 39 bends largely to have a large restoring force when the sliding door is fully open and restores upward at a burst to bias the wire harness 32 upward.
Moreover, even if the whole length of the flat spring 39 is made so long as to absorb the slack of the wire harness 32 efficiently, on the contrary, restoring force (moment) of the flat spring 39 becomes small so that the absorbability may not be improved.
This invention has been accomplished to solve the problems and an object of this invention is to provide a harness protector and a structure for supplying electric power using the harness protector, whereby in a case that the protector is compacted in a longitudinal direction (direction of absorbing the harness slack) or a back and forth direction, the wire harness does not sag during opening or closing of the sliding door.